SMS Campaigns

SMS Marketing uses text messaging to deliver marketing content.

Although mobile phones have been popularly used for more than 15 years, it has only been fairly recent that marketers recognized the effectiveness of SMS Marketing. The initial purveyors of this practice were the carriers themselves who had the data base and had built a relationship with their subscribers. The growth of text messaging as a marketing tool has grown correspondingly with the popularity of mobile devices.

There are several advantages of SMS Marketing:

Quick Delivery

– The average transmission time of a text message from sender to recipient is under seven seconds. Faster than other forms of online marketing.

Flexible

With SMS, you can send messages to a targeted group or “blast” thousands of messages to people in your data base. Messages can be customized to fit the profile of your target market.

High Open Rate

When people hear a notification from their smart phone they will open and check their message regardless of whom it came from. SMS has a higher open rate than e-mail marketing where letters may be filtered, bypassed or credited as “Spam”.

Short Messages

The 160 character limit of SMS may be a challenge for most marketers but it focuses content to be more direct and relevant. The attention span of consumers is less than one minute. For marketing purposes, short, concise messaging is more effective.

Complement other marketing strategies

The simplicity of SMS marketing makes it a perfect complement to other online marketing strategies. You may send a text message to a contact reminding him or her about the e-mail material that was transmitted earlier.

But SMS marketing can also be invasive. You need to make sure that the people you are sending messages to are agreeable in receiving your content. All SMS messages must also carry the option to request the marketer to stop sending further messages.

So how does SMS marketing work?

Here’s a walk-through on a typical SMS marketing campaign for a food retailer.

Step 1: A smart phone user receives a message that instructs him or her to text a keyword to a five-digit short code. For example: “Text DONUT to 12345 for a chance to win one-year supply of donuts for FREE!”

Step 2: The smart phone user will compose the message with 12345 as “To” and “DONUT” as the content.

Step 3: The message will be received by SMS marketing software that will store the number and send out a default reply which may read like this: “Thank you for joining our contest. We shall be picking our winner in one week.”

Step 4: The donut shop owner can access the data base created by the SMS marketing software to reach out and send messages for promotional purposes to everyone who participated in the contest.

SMS Marketing is expected to be widely used in the years to come because of the increasing popularity of smart phones. Three significant events toward the end of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 highlighted the influence of smart phones in our way of life.

In October 2014, the number of SIM card operating worldwide totaled 7.2 Billion which officially outnumbered the 7.1 Billion population of the entire world.

Year-end sales data in 2014 showed that tablets had grown only by 1% over the same period in 2013. People had put off buying the latest tablets in anticipation of the newer models of smart phones.

In January 2015, smart phones officially outpaced the desktop in terms of online traffic.

Currently, there are over one billion users of smart phones. The number is expected to surpass two billion before the end of 2015.

If you are interested in incorporating SMS marketing in your business development strategy, drop us an e-mail or give us a call. We have Virtual Assistants who are experienced and highly knowledgeable in designing and implementing an SMS marketing campaign to suit the needs of your business.

Are you ready to hire your virtual assistant?

Let us find the right virtual assistant for you and take care of your time-consuming tasks so you can focus on the important things.